I Am Here

I’ve been reading the obituary pages more attentively in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, because I am always interested in learning about Canadians. In several obituaries I have read that memorial donations can be made to an organization called Adsum House, and I finally got around to investigating this Latin-named shelter. 

The organization takes its name from the Latin verb adsum, adesse, adfuī meaning “I am here, I am present.” The name may also be a reference to a quotation associated with Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung, because the founders of Adsum House were religious institutions. The quotation uses aderit, the third-person future form of the verb, meaning "[God] will be present, here." But then the internet leads me on to yet more background information, ultimately to one of my favorite poets, Quintus Horatius Flaccus. You can read about the Delphic oracle, Thucydides and the Peloponnesian war, Horace, and Erasmus in this article from the Harvard Review.

All from one little Latin verb—how powerful one word is, especially in a poem. How impenetrable Latin can be, especially in a quotation. How wonderful to read of writers and poets reacting to the same words in Greek, Latin, English, and Japanese over millennia. And, as always in this world, how astonishing of the internet to put all these connections at our fingertips, as I am here, as I write and think, in Nova Scotia, Canada in 2016.